Telegraph | May 29, 1967 By Iris Hill Rae Wilson Sleight provided a considerable shakeup of the adage “You can’t go home again” on Sunday when she was honored as the Founder of the Western Nebraska World War II Canteen in North Platte. … Looking around the Canteen room, she spoke of remembering her father, George Wilson, and how he had assisted with the Canteen and helped to clean the room up after the day’s work was over, enjoying it so much. She also told of her sister, the late Rena Wilson, who was always so excited when a troop train passed through the area and stopped at North Platte. She would rush to the depot to help and in the excitement would break out with hives, not being able to be as helpful as she had hoped. … It has been 12 years since she has been back to her home town of North Platte for a visit … During the afternoon, Mrs. Sleight was present- ed an armed service certificate of appreciation. Since the war, the Canteen room had been opened for community events such as the regular Red Cross Bloodmobile and the 1969 and 1970 performances of the Frontier Revue, part of June’s annual Nebraskaland Days (Nebraska’s “official statewide celebration”), which had made North Platte its permanent home in 1968. But change was coming. Interstate 80 had been completed to North Platte on Dec. 9, 1966.
The Union Pacific had created Bailey Yard in 1968 by adding a second “hump yard” west of North Platte, with a diesel shop and car shop to follow. The U.P. was allowed to discontinue its passenger service that had begun in North Platte on Dec. 3, 1866, and brought those thousands of troop trains to North Platte’s wartime canteens. The last U.P. passenger train stopped at the depot on May 1, 1971.
Doris Dotson of North Platte, who would engage in swing dances with the Canteen’s uniformed visitors, is shown here in about 1960.
Des Moines, Iowa, and Sgt. John Thompson, U.S. Army recruiter in North Platte, will present Armed Service certificates of awards, similar to the one presented to the North Platte Canteen in general 24 years ago, to communities who assisted with the Canteen during World War II.
As a teenaged Canteen volunteer, Doris Dotson displayed service members’ donated unit patches on this jacket now displayed at the Lincoln County Historical Museum. Todd von Kampen / The North Platte Telegraph
136 CANTEEN: AS IT HAPPENED
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